King's Champion
by Kitty Ryan
Summary: A speculative piece for Goldenlake and the SMACKDOWN. How WOULD King Jonathan react--how would many of the auxillary characters in our heroines' lives react--if Alanna and Kel found themselves together? Knowing Jon, he'd take it personally.
1. Confrontation

**King's Champion**

_K. Ryan_

**

* * *

1. Confrontation**_

* * *

_"Sire."

"Honestly, Alanna, don't call me—"

"You never appreciate it when I call you an overblown, pustule-ridden ass, _sire_. Not even in private, sire. Some things _are_ private, s—"

"Lioness."

The King's Champion glared up at her liege, but she stopped talking.

"For someone who is," he coughed, with the sort of learned delicacy that made his friend want to gather up any of the ornaments or small items of furniture around the room and jam them over his head. "No longer fifteen, you're still very good at acting like a child."

Alanna snorted. "Why fifteen?"

"Excuse me?"

Her face, as she leant forward in her chair, toying with the tassel on the edge of a tablecloth, was serene. "Why, precisely, fifteen?"

Jon groaned. Alanna ignored him.

"You know full well I wasn't doing _anything_ like this at fifteen. Seventeen, perhaps," her eyes glinted. "I recall a lot of gasping and adoration at _seventeen_, and regret not one tiny, inappropriate bit of it, but even if you amend your words, it's still not _quite_—"

"That is nothing like what is happen now!"

The King was, delightfully, a little flushed, the hectic red complimenting his hair and beard. "Honestly, Alanna. You've heard the gossip." He stopped

"_Careful_, sire," she said sweetly. "The last time you started speaking that way, we didn't speak for two years afterward."

"Only because you run whenever there's—"

No. Not time for that conversation. He could breathe as they stared at each other over that particular waste. Just one snap from her, and they would both lose. She shook herself visibly, closed her eyes.

"I don't care about any gossip, Jon." Her hand held up in a list, she continued. "George doesn't care. He is a wicked encouragement. My children, before you dare to bring them into this, have their own lives. And, love," her voice was steady, too steady for him. He wanted to shout to bring her back into a shape he understood. The endearment cut a deal more than _overblown pustule-ridden ass_.

"You're right, " she said. "If Kel and I are fuelling gossip, this is _nothing_ like when I was seventeen."

"Alanna."

"And _stop_ looking to find out."

* * *

**Note:** Written for the second round of Kel/Alanna at Goldenlake's SMACKDOWN. All usual disclaimers apply


	2. Diplomacy

**King's Champion - Diplomacy**

* * *

"I don't know why you're so upset about this."

Thayet shifted to face him, hands still working steadily to unsnarl the heavy mess of her hair. "Actually, I do. But it doesn't give you any credit."

Her husband sighed. "What does?"

His smile slid under hers, and it was almost difficult to be exasperated.

"Less self pity?"

He laid his hand warmly on Thayet's shoulder, easing out a knot in the muscle that had the Queen close her eyes. "They're grown women, Jon."

"Wom—"

"_Grown women_, Jon."

The King sighed. "Truly? The King's Champion, and the one Knight of the Realm less afraid to point out my flaws then she is?"

Thayet sighed. "Keladry not _liking_ you is not a punishable offence."

"I never said it was."

She kissed him, soft. Just once. "My dear."

"I don't know _how_ George—"

"—George is not the point here."

Jon shifted, sliding his hands under Thayet's dark curls and slowly, gently, easing tangled. "They're married. He should be, surely?"

"Jonathan."

"My lady?"

He felt the tension as she moved, the lighter lines of her neck as she faced him, her hair still straining in his hand. "If you think Alanna won't still love you _now_, then you need to stop. Because you, on this one thing, are wrong."


	3. Reflections, Conflagrations

**King's Champion - Reflections, Conflagrations**

* * *

The kiss was hard, knocking the breath out of both of them, Alanna's body solid and sudden against hers, Keladry's knees giving as she was backed up against the bed. "Alanna?"

"Thank you— " another kiss. "For not—throwing me—" Kel groaned, hold shifting and shivering as Alanna left kisses along her jaw and, slowly, down her throat. "—Against the wall."

"Always a risk," said Kel, her hand sliding back to cup the base of the smaller woman's skull, "if you're going to _jump_ me."

A small, barrel-shaped dog barked his agreement. The two humans groaned.

"Shoo," said the Lioness.

Kel sighed. "Do as she says, please."

With a sigh and heavy, lumbering tread, the dog obeyed.

"In _my_ day," Alanna muttered, shifting forward, her knee pressed between Kel's, "I dealt with passing as a boy, and, oh, thieves and Goddesses and trying and mysterious Bazhir un-legends and arrogant princes and—"

"My Lady." The courtesy had enough truth for it never to fit awkwardly in her mouth, and she shuddered as the Lioness used her whole body to lace more pressure along her own.

"Un-legends?"

"Well," Alanna didn't waste movement on shrugging, keeping it in her voice as she ran one hand down to cup Kel's breast. Breasts were still, even after months of play and a good few years of speculation, interesting. Her other hand worked at the lacings of her tunic as Kel closed her eyes, her small smile stunned and accepting and dear.

"The Ysandir weren't ever spoken about in Persepolis," she said, leaning down to flick her tongue over that smile, laughing at Kel's gasp. "And then Jon and I _actually obliterated them_, following some blasted prophecy we'd never known about—of course, that's the way with prophecies…" She pulled back to let Kel pull her tunic over her head, and then leant forward to assist with the shirt, linen catching on calloused palms.

"Goddess," she breathed, and Kel, now half naked before her, would have laughed and told her not to be so silly, if Alanna hadn't caught up with her words again. "He just loved it, in the end. Sapphire-eyed _prince_, diplomat of the desert. Holder of his friend's deepest secrets. Insufferable, arrogant--"

Kel's hand, light but firm, across her mouth. "Alanna," she said.

Purple eyes widened, then narrowed. Kel removed her hand.

"Lucky I didn't bite you."

"I know." Kel's own eyes were dark, and serious despite her smile.

"What happened with Jon?"

"Good question." Another kiss, slow and lingering. "Next question?"

"No." Gentle. Inexorable. "Tell me." Stretching—and perhaps sighing, just a little, in ways that could be caught more by the movements she made than any sound that escaped her body—Kel pulled her shirt back on, shrugging a little as she realised it was inside out with her left arm halfway in.

"That must be just irritating."

"Alanna," said Kel. "Tell me."

She did, and she did not need to. Watching Kel's face more minute changes, Alanna was reminded that some anger, at least in theory, did not burn hot or cold, but clear.


	4. Ritual

**King's Champion - Ritual**

* * *

"I fell down."

"Lady Knight?"

The second Distaff Knight of Tortall stood before her King. Hands folded behind her back, uniform as crisp and clean as the attentions of a former maid and dear friend—unfazed by travel stains and weight gained in the arms and shoulders—could make them, and her eyes, long lashed, were lowered in a faint echo of the pose ingrained into her from years spent in a country where even warriors did not stand before their Emperor.

Her shoulders were squared, her jaw not quite set, as far as Jonathan could see, but there was nothing easy in the stillness of her face. It would be either a very short, or a very long, evening.

" Your Majesty," she said. "I fell down."

The King had been looking at her for the whole audience. Now, his eyes slipped to the ceiling, gracefully arched and far away. "Keladry of Mindelan," he said. "It is our wish to have clarity."

A faint shift, a creak of weight in the direction of the Queen's empty throne. "I'm afraid I don't know how to be more clear, sire," she told him, her voice soft and level in the space.

"You do not look injured." Jonathan allowed himself a slip, a little scorn.

"Not all falls hurt, sire."

"Lady Knight. You and the _Lioness_—"

Alanna the Lioness, King's Champion, might be a Knight who could interrupt her king. Keladry simply looked up.

"I fell, your Majesty," she said. "I fell down and I fell hard, and that is all I can say, sire." Her lashes lowered again, the faint splash of colour across her cheek and the look in her eyes that had nearly made the King blush an unsteady memory.

"You...fell down, Lady Knight."

"I did, sire."

"And that is all you have to say to your King?"

"Until my falling down affects the realm, sire."

A long or a short evening. It was. Suddenly, his choice.


	5. Infamy

**King's Champion - Infamy

* * *

**

"Mindelan," Wyldon of Cavall, for whom—despite years of at least strongly alleged retirement and the upcoming marriage of his daughter—home borders were a distant memory, sighed.

"You are beginning to be infamous."

Kel looked at her desk. It was always easier, somehow, to do that than to look her former training master when he was on the other side of it. The wrong side.

"Haven't I always been infamous?"

"At least look me in the eye when you're being obtuse, Lady Knight."

Kel looked up. "Begging your pardon, my lord, but no matter what I do—"

"—or with whom."

Kel raised her eyebrows. The interruption told her more than words ever could. "Or with whom," she murmured, "I will always be a _little _infamous."

"Some songs stain more than others," said Wyldon, coolly.

"_'The Probationary Page found her full-fledgèd stage...'_"

Scars tightened. A vessel twitched. "Indeed."

"_'...Taking down a Lioness between wars to wage,_' honestly, sir, I prefer it to the ones where I'm ten feet tall." She smiled, gently pushing the mug of cider Wyldon had not touched throughout the impromptu interview toward him. "Truly, my lord, it's a little confronting to hear I'm ten feet tall _and_ wearing a _matching_ wooden—"

"—Spare me, Mindelan."

"Forgive me, my lord. But you can see how ridiculous this situation is, can't you? There's no other word for it."

Wyldon sighed, blinking slowly in lieu of a weary hand over his eyes. "And yet, you're happy."

Her expression did not change. "It's as I told His Majesty last week, my lord," she said. "I fell down."

The smile uncoiled deep inside him and tilted his face before he had wit to halt it. "You said that, did you?"

"I always did find it useful."

His laugh was short and shared, before Kel leaned forward in her chair and conversation fell into its proper place: the question of when, after a war was over, a camp became a village, and how Commanders had to ease and shout, and occasionally haul, these hopes into fact.


End file.
